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Website content is a key component of a business’s online presence and can play a major role in the overall success of a company’s marketing tactics. There are several types of content that can be incorporated into a website, and each type has its own benefits. Here we will explore everything you need to know about creating high-quality content for your website, including what website content is, the different kinds of website content, and tips to ensure your content is as effective as possible.
Website content is written or visual content that users see when they visit websites. For example, when you click on a link to a website, nearly everything you see on that page is considered website content. Content can include images, animations, text, sounds, and videos as well as other elements on a website that are used to communicate with the viewer.
Web content is crucial to nearly every aspect of attracting and closing customers and no website is successful without quality content. Whether you are trying to sell a product, encouraging users to sign up for your weekly newsletter, or asking viewers to participate in a poll, content is the key behind persuading users to take an action.
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Website content is important for several reasons, with a primary reason being that it can establish you as a trustworthy source on the internet. Search engines use the content published on websites to determine the quality and authority of a given site. The higher the quality of content you publish and the more value it adds to viewers, the higher search engines will display your website pages in search engine results. This can drastically impact your website’s searchability and increase the chance it will be seen by new customers, which can ultimately lead to increased sales and brand awareness.
Additionally, high-quality web content is important because it:
There are two primary types of web content used on the internet. These types include text content and media content and can be defined as the following:
Text content is all written content on a website. Examples of text web content include:
Most text content on a website should follow a typical structure and include accurate punctuation, grammar, and spelling. Text may be included within images, as part of videos, or on its own as text blocks. High-quality text content is content that is original and adds value to the user. This means the content is unique and not plagiarized from other resources online. Text is the type of content that is most readily able to be analyzed by search engines and is therefore often the primary source of how your website is assessed and rated by search engines.
Additional text content that may be used on your website includes:
Sometimes referred to as multimedia, media content is all other content on a website in addition to text content. Media content may include:
In most cases, media content is most successful when it is used in moderation. It’s also important to ensure that any multimedia content you use on your website does not interfere with your website’s loading time, as this can result in the loss of viewers. The media you incorporate into your website should be specifically chosen based on your target audience and what they respond best to.
In addition to text and media content, there are several other forms of content that combine these two formats. The following are additional types of online content that you can use when creating new content for your website:
You should carefully research what your target audience responds to before incorporating different types of content into your website. For example, if your target customer is a 20-something who understands and enjoys memes, this may be a good content idea for your website. However, if your ideal customer is older and does not regularly view or enjoy memes, you should consider another content option.
The following are steps you can take to create high-quality and effective content for your company’s website:
Setting your company apart from your competitors is essential when creating and growing your website and online presence in general. With millions of company websites on the web, differentiating your business is mandatory if you want to succeed in the online world. Consider the “why” of your company and how your products or services provide a unique solution to your target audience’s problems or needs.
Additional factors to consider when determining your value proposition include:
Your value proposition should be the backbone of all the content you create for your company’s website. The better you understand and can communicate why your business is better than competitors, the more effective your content is likely to be.
Good website content begins with identifying and understanding all of your buyer personas. A buyer persona is a representation of your ideal client or clients. You can have one buyer persona or several; the key is to know everything you can about your target customer and to create content that speaks directly to them.
When identifying your company’s buyer personas, consider their:
An example of a buyer persona is as follows:
You will use the information you gather when identifying your buyer persona to create targeted content that is directly related to their needs, pain points, and interests. The more specific you are about your buyer persona, the better able you will be to target your ideal customer.
If you already have a website with content on it, you should first run an audit on that content to determine how it is currently performing. This audit will give you a better understanding of what’s working and what isn’t on your website so that you can identify what needs to be changed and what can stay.
The following are steps you can take to run an audit on and improve your website content:
When auditing your website’s content, you should additionally make sure your content has the following:
When mapping out your content strategy, you should ensure that your web copy follows a logical pattern that leads customers through the sales funnel. The following are the most common lifecycle stages that a potential customer goes through when visiting a website:
There is certain content that will be essential to your website. Common content that is necessary for most company’s web presence includes:
The exact content that will be necessary for your website will depend on your industry as well as the products and services you offer. Take time to research your competitors’ websites, especially those that are highly successful, to get an idea of what website content you should consider essential. Then, outline this content and determine the specific information you will include in each area.
Once you have determined what content needs to be created, you can then organize a content team and divvy out the content assignments to each team member. You can either form an in-house content team or hire freelance content writers depending on your needs, budget, and resources.
You should choose people to be part of your content team who are knowledgeable about the topics you want to cover. For example, if you plan on creating an eBook on the importance of drinking 75 ounces of water a day to promote your 75-ounce water bottle, you should find a person who is educated in water consumption and how it affects health and wellness.
Once you have organized a content team, create a content schedule and ensure that each team member understands what is expected of them in terms of content creation. For example, if you want to post two blog posts a week, ensure that the person in charge of creating blog posts is aware of this expectation and also has the time and resources to accomplish the goal. Hold your content team accountable and adjust expectations where needed for maximum success.
The next step in creating high-quality website content is to begin the production phase. Focus on creating content that is value-driven and addresses the needs and problems that your ideal customer faces. The higher the quality and value of your content, the more likely you are to attract new customers and rank high on the search engine results page (SERPs).
Tips for creating value-driven content include:
An important part of having a successful and lucrative web presence is to regularly and reliably publish content. For example, if your company has a blog, you should commit to publishing new blog posts on a consistent and predictable basis. You publish post a new blog post every Monday, or on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Stay committed to whichever schedule you choose to follow. This will build up an audience as well as allow them to anticipate your new content.
A key component of successful website content is ensuring that is performing well and is as relevant as possible to your target customer. You must regularly evaluate how your content is performing and make changes as needed to improve performance. Ways to determine how your content is performing include:
There are several tools available to help you track this information. Common tools to use include:
The following are important tips to consider when creating website content to ensure it is as effective as possible at attracting, converting, and maintaining customers:
Many internet users only spend minutes or even seconds on a website. In fact, studies have shown that the first 10 seconds of a user’s experience on a webpage will determine if they stay or leave the site. This means that your content should be structured in a way that quickly and effectively captures attention.
You can do this by using the “inverted pyramid” model which focuses on putting the most important and relevant content at the top of a website and then slowly introducing more detailed and specific information. This can help grab a user’s attention at the onset of their visit to your webpage and keep them on your website by providing more in-depth details.
When visiting a new website, users often skim through the site to see if the content contains what they are looking for. Without easily skimmable content, a user may click out of your website before truly understanding what you have to offer. Ways to make your content easier to skim include:
Websites with only text are often less inviting to users than those with several forms of content. And, studies have shown that 90% of information received by and understood by the brain is visual. This means that incorporating multimedia into your web content will often attract users more effectively than blocks of text. Media to consider including is infographics, videos, graphs, charts, images, and videos.
When creating content for your website, you can use something called layering to direct users to different parts of your website. For example, if they are reading a blog post on your latest product, you can include a link in the blog post to the page where they can purchase the product. This makes it easy for users to navigate to different areas of your webpage that would be helpful to them and can ultimately promote conversions.
The shorter and more concise your sentences are, the more likely that viewers will actually read them. Longer sentences can quickly cause readers to space out or lose interest, especially if these sentences contain complicated words and phrases. Keep your sentences as short as possible and use easy-to-read language that can be understood by a 7th or 8th grader. You can use a tool that tests the readability of your content to ensure it is as concise and easily readable as possible.
Rather than simply referring to how great your product or service is, using descriptions and examples to help users see why your products and services are the best. For example, rather than saying “our hair products are the best on the market,” use descriptive language such as “we created this all-natural, plant-based shampoo from 100% sustainable ingredients that are not only good for your hair but are also good for the environment. Ninety-seven percent of our users saw increased manageability and 87% reported smoother strands after just three uses.”
Your ultimate goal when creating content should be to provide value to your target audience. Without value, users have little need for your website and will likely not go on to purchase products or services from your company.
Here are a few examples of value-driven content:
Additional strategies you can implement to increase the value your content provides include:
The more specific your content is to your niche or industry, the more likely it will attract your ideal customer and convert potential consumers into buyers. Determine what niche your target audience falls into and create content that directly corresponds with that niche.
For example, let’s say you have a hair product company. Rather than targeting every person who has hair, consider narrowing this down to women with blonde hair. This gives you a highly definable target consumer to gear your content towards. The more specific you are about the niche you are targeting, the more likely you are to reach that niche and make an impact with your content.
Without proper search engine optimization (SEO), your website content may not be found by new potential customers. All content you create and put on your website should include carefully thought out optimization tactics. Examples of how you can optimize your content include:
According to a survey conducted by Google, 67% of people said they are more likely to visit a website that is mobile-friendly and buy from this site. The same survey found that 50% of people are less likely to buy from a business if their site is not mobile-friendly, even if the customer likes the business. And, 52% of users reported that they are less likely to engage with a business if their site provides a negative mobile experience.
These percentages show that mobile-friendly website content is imperative to attracting and keeping customers. If your website offers an easy-to-use and positive mobile experience, users are far more likely to buy from your business.
You can implement the following methods to increase how mobile-friendly your website and its content is:
The following is a template you can use as a guide when creating content for your company’s website:
[URL: This should be your company’s website URL along with an optimized title tag following a “/”. For example, a URL for a page on your website may be “www.abccompany.com/how-to-organize-dining-room.”]
[Title/headline: Most if not all of your website pages should have a headline or title that denotes what the page is about. Your header should be descriptive and eye-catching as well as contain an optimized keyword.]
[Sub-headers: Subheadings can help break up your content to make it easily skimmable for viewers. Your sub-headers should be descriptive and clearly note what the section is about.]
[Body: This is where the majority of your content will go on your webpage. Consider breaking up your body content into bulleted or numbered lists when possible and keep paragraphs short.]
[Multimedia: Consider including images, graphics, or other forms of multimedia in the body of your content to break up content and draw in the viewer’s attention. Ensure that the multimedia you include is relevant to the content on the webpage.]
[Call to action: When possible, you should include a call to action at the end of the content on a webpage. This can motivate users to take action after viewing your website. Include a call-to-action button when possible.]
Creating high-quality, value-driven website content can boost your website’s ability to be found by new customers and increase your overall profitability. The information discussed in this article gives you a solid foundation on how to compose the most effective content possible to support your web presence.
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